Practice Time

Without a doubt, there is always an audible groan from my students when I pull out the metronome during lessons. There is something about the sound of rhythmic clicking that seems to really terrify all students of the guitar. But in all seriousness, the metronome is probably one of the best practice tools you can ever use. This is because playing in time is probably most important thing about music!

One of the hardest things to do when playing music is to gauge your own improvement. Music is so subjective that most of the time we feel as though we are stuck in a rut even if we are improving, and this is especially the case for beginners. For example, if you can’t play through a new song at full speed, you might think you aren’t improving at all, but if you start slowly using a metronome, over the next few days you will find yourself being able to play faster and faster. The little number on the metronome doesn’t lie!

When I go through more advanced solos with my more experienced students, I often find that the notes are all in the right place but the timing is way off. I hear solos being rushed, and chord progressions and strumming are usually uneven. When a section of a song is hard (or we get nervous), our time feel can change dramatically, so the best way to counter this, is to turn on the metronome and really focus on playing in time with it!

As a professional musician, you can really get a lot of work by just having good time, so it’s really worth working on it!

You can get simple metronome apps for free on the app store for android and apple so there is really no excuse!